Punjab to have first women protection authority

LAHORE - The Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit is going to set up an authority to ensure enforcement of Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act 2016.

The SMU (law and order) proposed establishment of an authority to protect the rights of women under the women protection act, and to establish and manage operations of Violence Against Women Centers (VAWC).

Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved the idea and sent it to Cabinet Committee on Law and Order headed by Law Minister Rana Sanaullah to vet the proposal and finalise the structure of the authority.

SMU, which pioneered the idea of VAWC, encompassed all the issues while establishing these centers with regard to dealing with all the different departments, and a structure was formalised for this purpose. The approved authority will have its own Director General (appointed by Chief Minister) and directorates responsible for finance, administration, procurement, architecture, engineering, enforcement, monitoring and evaluation to oversee all the operations of the centers and enforcement of the Women Protection Act 2016.

Post of AIG (Women Protection) will be created as part of the enforcement division, which will oversee all the female SPs in all Violence Against Women Centres.

The human resource division will be in charge of all hiring at Violence Against Women Centres because the existing staff is not equipped to deal with the state of the art concept.

It is further decided to make new facilities for VAWC in Gujranwala and Faisalabad and satellite units of VAWC in the rest of the districts which will have same facilities as VAWC.

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